Solan roared away from me. I twisted out from under him, and my feet came back around like a hammer. He flew over backward. I sprang up. He rolled to one knee and crouched, facing me. His eyes watered. He squinted.
We stared at each other across the scorching asphalt, our chests heaving. My cheek throbbed. Solan thumped his big hand against the ground and growled in what seemed like frustration.
What did he expect? He’d never gotten the best of me in a fistfight. Only Raquel had. Solan was usually making off with my target while she and I beat the shit out of each other until she pulled some underhanded stunt that gave her the advantage.
“Had enough, friend?” I taunted.
“I need this,” he grated, rising.
“So I should just forfeit my freedom and go with you because you need this?” I scoffed. Solan and Raquel were rolling in bounty money—almost as much as I was. “Never gonna happen.”
Solan moved in a slow circle, looking for an opening.
“How ’bout we both put down our weapons?” I heard Raquel offer. She must’ve drawn something while I wasn’t looking. “We can do this hand-to-hand, the old-fashioned way. The way the men are.”
“No!” I shouted. Raquel would wipe the floor with Tess, and she’d fight dirty.
“Fine,” Tess answered. “But you first.”
“You think I’m stupid?” They could probably hear the sneer in Raquel’s voice three planets over.
“Same time, then,” Tess said.
I whirled. “Tess!” Lowering her weapon would be a mistake. She had no idea who she was dealing with.
Solan came in fast and hard, a shadow-flash in my side vision. I barely evaded, my concentration broken.
Fuck hand-to-hand. I was done fighting fairly. I freed my gun but wasn’t sure who to aim it at. Probably Raquel. She was the greater danger.
The hesitation cost me. Solan kicked the Grayhawk from my hand, and I went numb from wrist to fingers. He plowed into me, toppling me over again. I kept my head up this time, but the backs of my arms scraped along the landing pad surface. Ignoring the pain, I threw my legs up and wrapped them around his neck while his balance was pitched forward. Twisting, I brought him down hard on one shoulder and sat on him. My fist barreled toward his face with a decade of fury and frustration behind it. Pain flared in my hand, but it was the near-knockout punch I needed. Solan blinked at me, limp and groaning.
I shifted my weight to pin him better. “Back off, call off your harpy, and we can go our separate ways again.”
“Can’t,” he said thickly, his eyes unfocused. “Need the money.”
Compressed air popped with a burst of pressure. Tess grunted. My heart seized, and I whipped around to find her.
Raquel sprang forward and grabbed Tess in the doorway. The bounty hunter propped Tess against the front of her body, keeping her upright as Tess’s knees sagged and a heaviness I knew all too well overtook her body. Terror burst in Tess’s eyes two seconds before her features began to slacken.
“Shadey Poo, I’ve got your girlfriend.” Raquel’s singsongy words filled my chest with poison. I doubted I’d have killed Solan. Her, I wasn’t so sure about. I snarled.
Raquel smiled at me as Tess’s expression glazed over. A tranquilizer dart poked out of her shoulder. Her jaw sagged, slowly falling open, and Raquel pushed her mouth closed by thrusting Tess’s Grayhawk up under her chin. Raquel’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“No.” A cold fist wrapped around my heart and squeezed out the hardest beat of my existence. “Don’t.”
Raquel smirked. She knew she had me. “Let my husband go, or I’ll plug her with more than just a tranquilizer.”
I slowly put my hands up.
“Do little rebels survive bullets to the brain?” Raquel wiggled Tess’s limp body. “I wonder.”
I jumped off Solan, a bitter taste flooding the back of my mouth like acid. I backed away from the bounty hunter. “Let her go.”
“No.” Tess formed the word with difficulty. She shook her head, trying to fight off the sedative. “Run, Shade.”
Run? As if that would fucking happen.
Raquel gripped her harder. Tess stopped moving. Her head lolled, but then she straightened it and forced her eyes open.
“Tie him up.” Raquel nodded to Solan. “We’re just wasting time now.”
Solan rose with a groan, moving slowly. After a hard blink, he grabbed my wrists and forced them behind me. A cord circled them, cold hard plastic. He drew the single cuff tight with a yank that jarred my shoulders.
“So much for a decade of not-quite-friendship.” I rounded on him in disgust. “I guess I was right to never really trust you two. You always do something to screw me over.”
Solan shoved me toward Raquel, muttering, “I didn’t want to.”
“That didn’t fucking stop you!” I hadn’t even begun to think about being court-martialed, or spending life in prison, or whatever the hell was about to happen to me. I only knew these assholes had just ripped my first happiness in years away from me.
Solan refused to look at me, his expression stony.
“Take the key card from my pocket and give it to Tess. And don’t touch her.” They had me. As promised, they’d better leave her out of this.
“Shade…” Tess’s weak croak made me want to set fire to the universe—and then burn it down a second time. Raw pain ripped through me. This couldn’t be over.
“Tess!” My end wouldn’t be hers. I’d make sure of it. “498721BVR—that’ll turn on the cruiser. Do what you need to do and get out of here.”
She moaned, her eyelids drooping.
“Baby! 498721BVR,” I shouted again, trying to penetrate the fog she was in. “You gotta remember the ignition numbers!”
If she didn’t, she’d be stranded here. The crew might think she didn’t make it. She didn’t even have her tablet to contact them. They had one device, and it was on the Endeavor. She’d never get into mine unless she had expert hacking skills I didn’t know about. The thought of Tess alone halfway across the galaxy from her crew with no ship, no money, and Nathaniel Bridgebane as her only possible point of contact sent me into a blind panic.
“Tess!” I bellowed.
Raquel rolled her eyes and dropped Tess in a way that could’ve been disfiguring if she’d gone over face-first. I jerked against my restraints—an automatic impulse to catch her. But I was too far away and fucking tied up. I howled. Tess lay on her side, breathing shallowly, her eyes half-open and on me.